The present disclosure relates to rendering hypertext markup language (HTML) content. HTML is an authoring language commonly used to create documents on the World Wide Web. HTML defines the structure and layout of a Web document using a variety of tags and attributes, which an HTML rendering engine interprets when processing HTML content. Typically, a Web browser employs an HTML rendering engine to render HTML content to a display device. In other cases, HTML content has been rendered statically to another format before display to a user, such as using the Web Capture feature in ADOBE ACROBAT® software provided by Adobe Systems Incorporated of San Jose, Calif.
In addition, the HTML rendering engine typically uses a document object model (DOM) when rendering HTML content, such as by using the DOM when rendering dynamic HTML (DHTML), to dynamically change the appearance of Web pages after they have been downloaded to the Web browser. The DOM maintains an internal document representation and implements the DOM application program interface (API). JavaScript embedded in an HTML document can directly access the current document through the DOM API, and make changes or read the content.
A virtual machine (VM) is a self-contained operating environment that behaves as if it is a separate computer. For example, JAVA® applets run in a JAVA® Virtual Machine (JVM) (available from Sun Microsystems, Inc.), which has been implemented for many different computer platforms. The JVM provides a runtime environment and Java interpreter for most operating systems, including WINDOWS® OS, MAC® OS, AND LINUX® OS. Moreover, the JVM has been implemented as a Web browser plug-in.
Flash® Player (available from Adobe Systems Incorporated) is another virtual machine, which is used to run, or parse, Flash® files including ActionScript or Shockwave Flash (SWF). The Flash® Player has also been implemented as a Web browser plug-in. Thus, HTML content that is rendered by a Web browser can include SWF data.